Losers Fic: Walk a While With Me, 4/6
Jun. 23rd, 2012 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyjanellyTitle: Walk a While With Me 4/6
Author: LadyJanelly
Fandom: The Losers
Rating: Mature
Characters/Pairing: Jake Jensen/Carlos “Cougar” Alvarez
Warnings: Bullying, hazing, homophobia, racism, internalized homophobia, violence, language, mentions of previous assault and sexual assault,
Notes: Thanks to Peaceful_sands for her hand-holding, cheer-leading and beta-reading
Title from the Led Zeppelin song “Over the Hills and Far Away”
Summary: AU—Jake Jensen left the Army before he ever had a chance to be a Loser. Cougar meets him anyway.
Sometimes what a man needs to be happy is losing the battle he’s been fighting his whole life.
==============
On Saturday they get up before it gets hot and go for a run. Cougar wonders how the others are doing, Clay and Roque on base, Pooch at his Abuela’s house. Wonders if they’re pushing themselves as hard as Jake is nudging him. He remembers the last time he went to his mother’s home to recuperate, years ago. Being waited on hand and foot, scolded if he tried to do anything but watch television and drink beer. Jake understands that Cougar is returning to the field, that he might be on a mission in as little as two weeks and he doesn’t want Cougar pampered, he wants him strong.
So they run, Jake in his t-shirt, shorts and sneakers, Cougar wearing sweat pants and combat boots. They cut out across the park, ankles soon wet with dew. Sometimes cross-country, sometimes on the paved walkways. Jake sets the pace, keeping Cougar challenged but not exhausted. It becomes a matter of pride, to keep up, to not call a halt. He’s glad to see the spreading patch of sweat between Jake’s shoulder-blades, to know that he’s in good enough shape that Jake is getting a workout at least.
They’re back at the house before he expects it, the air-conditioning sharp and cold. Jake tosses him a towel and orders “Go shower, you stinky, stinky man!” Cougar flips him off but he goes to clean up anyway. He starts with the shower set cooler than his body temperature, feels the water rinsing heat from his scalp. It feels good. He feels good. Thinks about Jake’s shoulders in front of him as they ran, Jake’s strong thighs and perfect rear.
It takes a light touch to bring himself to full hardness, one hand on the shower tile, water streaming down over him. He wraps the other around his cock, firm and steady strokes rolling his foreskin over the head of it and back again with every pull. His lips part as he comes, breath without voice lost in the patter of the shower. He stands there, enjoying the aftershocks, letting himself savor the sensations.
Finally he sighs and straightens and steps out of the shower, but leaves the water still running as he combs his hair and shaves the wayward strands of beard that pop up between sideburns and goatee. When he’s done he shuts off the shower and leaves the room.
He passes Jake in the doorway and smirks at him. He hears Jake yelp out “You fucker!” as the cold water hits him and Cougar’s smirk turns to a full on grin. He wonders if Jake will be half as bossy next time.
When Jake’s done with his shower they head to Teresa’s to pick the girls up for lunch. It feels funny to ride in her beige sedan after so many trips in Jake’s truck, but it’s the only vehicle that’ll hold all four of them. Sophie picks sushi and Jake drives them north to a blue-tile roofed Japanese place with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Cougar stays mostly on the fried-food side of it. Eating raw fish isn’t something he wants to do when he doesn’t have to. He teases Sophie by making faces as she tries the tuna and the roe and is glad when she laughs at him and makes exaggerated faces of enjoyment.
It’s good and simple and it’s easy to fall into the fantasy that this is his life, living with Jake, working hard through the week and relaxing on the weekend with those Jake considers family. He can see the danger in it but doesn’t allow himself to pull away.
They get home mid-afternoon and work on the house a while longer. Jake takes first shower this time, comes out with his beard neatly trimmed and gel spiking his blond hair. He digs through the plastic case he keeps his clothes in and pulls out a pale pink button-down shirt and a clean pair of jeans.
“Going out?” Cougar asks and Jake shoos him into the shower.
“Hell yeah. You promised me dancing. You drink, I’ll drive, it’ll be great.”
Cougar rolls his eyes because Jake is the biggest child he has ever met, but he gets ready anyway and together they go back to the gay district.
They park the truck and Cougar settles his hat more firmly on his head. Jake leads the way down crowded sidewalks to a club—not the one they first met at but close enough that it makes no difference. He pays their way and then they’re pushing into the wall of sound and gyrating bodies, the heavy bass thudding into Cougar’s chest.
“What do you drink?” Jake yells into his ear. “Tequila?”
Cougar shrugs and realizes he doesn’t really want one. Doesn’t want to be fucked, not by a stranger, not here. Not where Jake would see and know what he was doing, who he was doing it with.
“I was supposed to buy,” Cougar protests, because if Jake is going to use his promise to get him here, he’ll damn well let Cougar get the tab.
Jake snorts and waves him off, grinning and bouncing on his toes, just as eager as he had been getting into the MMA ring as he weaves through the crowd to the bar. Cougar finds a place by the wall and wonders just how badly the evening will end. Jake finds him a few minutes later, balancing a shot of tequila, a beer chaser and a glass of soda in his big hands.
Cougar downs the shot, grateful for the distracting burn of it, the cool bitterness of the beer after.
Jake leans against the wall beside him, drinks a few sips of his Coke. “So what’s your type?”
Cougar smirks and waves him away. “You came to dance, go dance.”
He half-expects Jake to drag him out to the floor, debates with himself just how much resistance to put up, what moves to use, because of all the things Cougar does well, dancing is not one of them. Jake looks him over, considering, and then hands him his half-full glass and slips out onto the floor.
If anything, Jake is a worse dancer than Cougar. His enthusiasm is boundless and his sense of rhythm a quarter-beat off. He grins and bounces and dances with some pretty Asian boy, turns and shimmies with a blond who is taller than he is. Jake’s partners put up with his lack of skill because he is beautiful, tall and lean, the club lights shining on his skin as he works up a fine sheen of sweat.
A man comes to stand beside Cougar, dark hair, dark clothes, stark black goatee. He smirks sideways and pointedly glances from the glass Cougar is holding out to where Jake is making a fool of himself on the dance floor.
“He yours?” the man asks.
“Mi amigo,” Cougar replies and he’s not sure for a second if the guy will go chat up Jake or if he himself is the target.
“Are you mine?”
The man oozes sleazy sexiness, polished seduction, a practiced script. Cougar can be sure the man will use him and not ask him to stay when they’re done, if they even get to a bed in the first place.
Before Jake, he would have agreed for a night. Would have let himself be fucked, hurt, tossed away. Before Jake he would have wanted every aching minute of it, savored the pain as a way to distract from his own disgust at himself.
“No.” His tone is cold, final. The man looks him over again, intrigued.
“Too bad,” he says, “You and your friend have a nice night.”
Cougar nods and looks back to the dance floor, scanning for Jake’s height, his blond hair and pink shirt. When he catches sight of him again Jake is coming his way, a pair of shot glasses in his hands. He grins and looks half-relieved about something as he trades Cougar the soda for the pair of shots.
“Que?” Cougar asks when Jake doesn’t start talking right away.
Jake shrugs and gulps down the soda, crunches up some ice and swallows before he answers. “I was a little worried you’d leave with El Diablo.”
Cougar questions the statement with a raise of his eyebrow.
“Anybody who works that hard to look evil is not going to be caring and sharing in bed.”
Cougar watches the dancers for a while. Thinks about telling Jake he wouldn’t know caring if it fell into his lap. Imagines Jake’s face if he said he’s always looked for the opposite of caring before. He drops the still-full shot glasses onto the tray of a passing drinks-boy and shrugs. “I didn’t leave my hat in the truck.” When Jake looks puzzled he elaborates, “Guys like that always have to fuck with the hat.”
Jake’s lips quirk into a crooked grin. “You wanna get out of here?”
He does. More than anything. Wants to go back to Jake’s work-in-progress of a home and let Jake lay him out on the sagging mattress and touch him and not hurt him. He wants to know what it’s like, just once.
He nods and they leave, half-deaf as they step out into the humid Dallas night. Jake turns down the sidewalk instead of going straight back to the truck though, leads him to a lime-colored restaurant that serves burritos the size of his arm. There are gay men there, behind the bar and filling the booths, but it feels more like an overflow from the clubs than lunch at Hunky’s had.
They eat and Cougar shakes the buzz from the single shot he’d drunk.
“So it was a little early for this, huh?”
He looks up at Jake.
Jake shrugs. “You’ve still got a week. Seems a criminal shame to waste the chance, on leave, in a city with no military base closer than two hours drive.”
Cougar pushes his food away. “Later,” he agrees, but knows he’s stalling and intends to keep stalling until he’s back at Bragg. That he won’t get fucked this week, won’t let someone use him, not when Jake will be there after, will see on Cougar’s face that it was bad and he’d wanted it to be bad.
They finish their late-night meal and then Cougar’s in no rush to go back to the house where Jake won’t lay him down, won’t fuck him tonight. They walk, up the brightly lit, raucous blocks of Oak Lawn and then east one and back down through a neighborhood of small but posh apartment complexes and little houses.
==============
The days slip past, one by one. On Sunday, Jake takes his sister and niece to church. He leaves the truck in case Cougar needs it. He thinks about it for a while, keys in hand, and then he pulls on his best shirt and cleanest jeans and drives off.
He’s not sure where he’s going. There’s no side of town that’s more immigrant than the other, just little pockets of Hispanic stores and restaurants clumped together here and there. He finds what he’s looking for between a thrift store and auto parts place, a little storefront-church with a full parking lot. He’s been to one like this before, when the pomp and weight of a Catholic service was too much to bear, when he wanted to be a stranger among strangers, people trying to find a home.
The chairs are plastic and all full and Cougar stands at the back with some other men, hat in hand and head bowed as the preacher speaks in rapid Spanish, words of love and compassion and peace. There is no shame in the sermon, no castigation of sin.
Cougar drops a twenty into the collection plate as it’s passed by him and sneaks out as everyone else is lining up for communion.
He’s back at Jake’s house before Jake comes to pick him up for after-church lunch at Teresa’s.
==========
Monday they go to the invite-only night at the MMA gym and Cougar watches as Jake gets taken down again and again. Another man may have become frustrated at the losses and walked away, but Jake just looks thoughtful, calculates what he’s done wrong and how to not do it again. He gives every opponent a good fight though, and his last match of the night he gets the choke hold on for the win.
“You guys want to come out for beers after?” Eliot asks them. Cougar would say yes but Jake’s quick to turn him down.
“Can’t. Work tomorrow,” and Cougar knows that Jake never has Tuesday shifts.
=======
On Wednesday night they paint the whole house, sprayers in hand, masked against the fumes, huge fans blowing the overspray out of the open doors. It’s hot and ugly work, even if the sun is already down.
“Should be ready to put on the market in two months, maybe less,” Jake announces when they’re through with the huge project. “I need to start looking for another house.”
=========
He’s supposed to have another weekend, doesn’t need to get his ass back to Bragg before Monday night. Still, he’s not surprised when his phone rings while they’re at the park with Sophie on Friday.
“Si,” he answers, as Jake looks curious for just a second before he walks away with his niece to give Cougar some privacy.
“Where are you at?” Clay asks, all brusque efficiency.
“Dallas.”
“They’re pulling us back to duty,” Clay says, “Backup for another team. Flying out tomorrow night if we’re all fit.”
And they’re on god-damn medical leave and Cougar knows he isn’t back to full strength yet, but Clay wouldn’t have let them be recalled without a fight, and no point in bitching about it when it’s already a done deal.
“You fit, Cougar?”
“Si.”
“Give me your address and I’ll have a car from Hood come get you. They’ll call when they’re on the way.”
Cougar tells him Jake’s address, and Clay hangs up. He watches Jake and Sophie kicking a soccer ball around on the field for a while, until Jake’s worried gaze catches his.
“Everything okay?” Jake says as he jogs over.
“Si. Colonel called. Leaving tonight.”
Jake’s lips press together but he doesn’t argue like Cougar expected him to.
“Let’s grab you some food before we take Sophie home. One last meal of real food before you’re back to base. Anything else you need to do besides pack your stuff?”
“No.” Somehow Jake’s efficient processing of the situation is making him feel more guilty, rather than less.
“Sophie!” Jake calls, “Let’s wrap it up! Pizza night!”
They eat and Cougar savors every moment, the good food but more than that Jake’s smiles and Sophie’s pouting that Cougar is leaving earlier than expected.
Cougar’s phone rings as they’re leaving the restaurant, a corporal from Hood letting him know he’s about two hours out.
Jake drops Sophie off at her mother’s and drives Cougar back to the house. “I’ll take pictures of the house for you,” he promises as they go inside. “Of what it looks like when it’s finished, in case you don’t get back before I sell it.” Like Cougar returning to Dallas is a foregone conclusion.
Cougar doesn’t have much to pack. Some shirts he’d pulled out to decide between once, and a bag of dirty laundry that he thought he’d have time to wash before he left that goes into a garbage bag before being stuffed into his duffel.
They sit on the edge of the bed and wait, not much time for anything else. Jake takes the phone from Cougar’s hand and puts his number into it.
“Call me this time, asshole.”
Cougar makes no promises to Jake, but he silently vows that it won’t be months without some communication this time.
There’s a beep of a car’s horn out front and Jake walks him to the door. This is why it is a bad idea for a soldier to form attachments outside of his unit, the pain of saying goodbye, knowing he could leave and never return.
“Hey,” Jake says, sad but smiling. “Sorry you didn’t get laid, I thought I had another weekend to work with.”
And fuck it. Fuck waiting and wanting and denying himself. Fuck pretending that he doesn’t want the one thing he does.
Cougar’s bag hits the floor and he steps forward, crowding Jake back against the wall, catching him with one hand at the nape of his neck and the other at his hip. Jake’s blue eyes go wide, startled. Cougar’s heart pounds in his chest. He’s done this with women, but he has never kissed a man, never had to look up to brush his lips to another’s.
He pauses, half a second to let Jake accept or protest, and then he’s kissing him, slow and sure and deep, using every bit of skill he’s cultivated with women even as his mind is cataloging the strangeness of it, Jake’s beard against his chin, Jake’s strong hands coming up to grab his shoulders and hold him close. Jake so damn tall and broad. Cougar moans and his skill deserts him and he’s devouring Jake’s mouth, hungry and desperate to tell him “I only wanted you, idiot,” and only the kiss to express himself with.
There’s a second beep from outside and in a second his driver will leave the car and come to the door and if he sees them both, red-lipped and flushed with passion, Cougar may as well write a memo before the rumors fly, he’ll be outed just as well either way.
“Dios,” he breathes and pulls away. Picks up the hat he hadn’t even realized he’d dropped and puts it back on his head. Jake lets him go, stunned and leaning against the wall, eyes wide and lips parted. Cougar grabs his bag and hurries out the door.
He hears Jake shout his name, once, but he doesn’t chase after him, doesn’t make a scene. Cougar slides into the waiting car and doesn’t look back.
=============
“You do know the point of time off was for you to eat, right?” Clay looks less than pleased.
Cougar drops his bag and holds his hands out, shoulder height, palms down, and holds them there. His hands are rock-solid, no tremble, no shake. He knows he’s still underweight, too thin. Wiry. If they get into trouble on this mission he’ll have fewer eserves to draw on.
Clay looks at his face instead of his hands, like he can peel away a mask and find the truth he’s looking for.
“Put your hands down,” Clay finally grouses at him. “What have you been doing?”
Cougar picks up his bag and Clay walks with him to the barracks room they’re using for the one night’s sleep before they fly out again.
“Eating,” Cougar says with a smirk. “Fixing a house, road work, hand-to-hand sparring.”
Clay makes a noise that sounds a little like approval. “Better skinny and fit than chubby and soft, I guess.”
They join the other team the next night, and somehow get lucky enough to spend three weeks running backup in the jungle without meeting up with a single enemy.
===============
Cougar checks his official e-mail when they get back to the States, and there among the spam and professional messages is a single personal mail, and in that mail a single line of text:
“COUGAR! WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK WAS THAT? This isn’t over.”
He smirks and deletes it. He’ll call Jake soon.
================
“Roque and I rented a house, four bedrooms. Pooch is taking one and the last is empty,” Clay says as he watches Cougar field-stripping the rifles he’ll use for the next op. Cougar doesn’t answer, not sure what the hell this has to do with him.
“It’s not healthy for a man to sleep and eat and work all in the same place for too long,” he adds, and Cougar swabs the inner workings, tilting the metal bits to catch the light.
“You’re moving in with us, and that’s an order!” Clay finally snaps and Cougar looks up at him. Oh. “Your split is four-hundred a month and if we get another full-time member you and Pooch fight it out to see who he bunks with.”
That thought makes him smirk, but he nods to Clay and goes back to work, wondering how this will change things, being closer still to these men.
He writes his madre a letter and sends it with that month’s check, telling her he’ll have less to send now, and that he’s living off-base. On impulse, he puts the home phone number at the bottom. As much as he hates dodging her calls, he cannot stomach the idea of leaving her no way to try.
Of course she calls, gets Pooch all riled up, “Dude, she’s your momma, take the damn phone!” until he starts making himself scarce whenever it rings. Sometimes he’ll listen from the other side of the wall as they talk, can imagine his madre and her broken English, asking Pooch if Carlos is eating, if he’s found a girl-friend, if he’s happy.
================
“I thought your family was in southern California,” Roque says as they’re riding a Humvee over a broken desert wasteland. He has to yell over the bump and rattle of the pitted road, but nobody else could hear.
Cougar shrugs, knows the others see his mail as it comes in, his mother’s neat print on the envelopes, a letter every week.
“What the hell is in Dallas then?”
“Mi Amigo,” Cougar says, “Jake.” Even bringing his name here seems like a risk or a betrayal.
He doesn’t provide any more information and Roque doesn’t ask again.
================
Cougar has a fuck-with list; the only problem is it has no names on it. He can’t ask Clay, can’t ask anyone he knows, because there will be questions, questions whose answers could get him thrown out or worse. A week of down-time (on hold, confined to base, waiting to see which of three ongoing missions will need them to run clean-up operations), drives him restless. He finds himself looking into the eyes of the soldiers he passes, wondering if they were there, the night Jake was hurt.
He needs to know the names, the faces. He needs a tech, someone soft enough for him to push without pushing back, someone intimidated enough to keep their mouth shut and not ask questions. Someone he outranks.
Current techs are easier to stalk than past connections between soldiers and Cougar chooses fresh blood for his prey, a scrawny twenty-something kid with a twitchy personality. He’s not special forces, but better with computers than anyone currently serving who has survived Q. His security clearances are high and he gets loaned out to different teams when his skills are needed.
Cougar needs his skills. He waits until the kid is in the dining hall, comes over and sits across from him, stares silently until the kid freezes, staring up like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
“Walk with me, Private,” Cougar says and the kid gets up, leaves his lunch and follows Cougar out the door.
“I need a list of names,” Cougar tells him when they’re out of earshot of everyone, taking the long walk out towards the sniper range. “Around two years ago, there was a soldier, probably stationed at Fort Hood. Special forces.” And he hopes that’s right, that Jake isn’t one of a thousand posers in the world, claiming to be things they’re not.
“His name is Jake Jensen. I need to know the names of the men he last served with. You will get me these names and then forget we spoke. Understand?”
The kid nods like there’s a spring loose in his neck. “Yeah, I can do…wait, Jake Jensen? Jacob Alan Jensen? J-Mageddon?”
Cougar pins him with a look, knowing he’ll keep talking if Cougar doesn’t.
“He was one of us, dude, and then he was one of you guys and…” the tech’s eyes go wide and then narrow suddenly. “That was years ago,” he says and Cougar doesn’t like where this was going. “Why would you care?” he blinks. “How would you know? Oh, shit, you know him? Jensen?”
Cougar can almost see the gears turning in the kid’s head. “Oh-em-gee, are you dating J-Mageddon? Seriously?”
Cougar looks around but nobody seems to have heard, nobody close enough to hear, even though the kid’s voice keeps getting higher. Panic clenches in his chest and he steps into the kid’s personal space. He growls, “Say that again and I’ll kill you.”
“No,” the kid breathes, eyes wide. “Hey, no, sorry. But. It was a shitty thing that happened. He was one of us. Geek solidarity. I’ll get you those names.”
He looks to see if Cougar is going to murder him on the spot, and when he doesn’t, the kid gives him a quick salute and then turns and jogs away.
Cougar continues on to the sniper range, the long distances of it making it the furthest from barracks except for artillery. He settles himself in one of the blinds, comfortable even without his rifle. He takes his phone out, scrolls through his few contacts, thumb resting on the keys.
Before two on a Tuesday . Jake should be at home, maybe eating lunch. Cougar presses talk and listens to the soft trilling as the phone connects. Jake’s bright “Hello?” and it all seems a million miles away.
“Hola,” he says, and hears Jake laugh.
“Cougs?”
“Si.”
“Good to hear from you, man. I wasn’t sure. The way we left things, you know?”
Cougar closes his eyes, listens to Jake breathe on the other end.
“You still there?”
“Si.”
“Not much of a phone guy?”
“No.”
“Then I’m flattered as hell that you’d call,” Jake says and Cougar smiles at the thought of it.
“Cougs,” Jake says, soft and low. “What the hell was that? I just…I thought you weren’t into me like that.”
Cougar sighs. “Jake.” And he doesn’t know what else to say. “Face to face, si?”
“Yeah,” Jake answers, “I can wait.”
Then Jake starts talking, about the progress on the house and Sophie’s new soccer team, his latest nights sparring at Eliot’s gym and the guys there. Cougar is glad to hear it, to feel he’s given Jake even this little bit of his self back.
He listens to Jake until his phone is warm against his ear and beeping plaintively that its battery is at the end of its life.
“Call me again sometime, okay?” Jake asks, and Cougar nods even though Jake is far from him.
“Si. I will.”
They hang up without words of endearment and Cougar wonders if this is even possible, even if they both want it—to build a life together in the brief days and weeks of any year that Cougar hasn’t already obligated himself to his team.
He thinks of Jake’s smile and Jake’s shoulder bumping his and he knows if it can be done, that he wants to try.
===============
Cougar thinks he’s going to have to track down his semi-willing accomplice in the quest for naming Jake’s attackers. He doesn’t expect him to run across half the courtyard to intercept Cougar in the middle of the afternoon, all puffed up like a Bantam rooster.
“What the fuck, man?” he hisses at Cougar and Cougar hustles him out of sight before they catch the attention of the base’s rumor-mill.
“What?” Cougar asks.
The tech’s hands flutter around in impotent anger. “You didn’t tell me he didn’t want you to know!” he protests. “Did that not seem important?”
Cougar glares and the kid swallows, gets himself under a modicum of control.
“He locked me out of my own system,” the tech complains. “For half the night I’ve been arguing with a purple CGI rabbit to please go away without reformatting my hard drive.” He gulps. “He said to tell the big kitty that it’s been taken care of a long time ago and not worth new trouble.”
Cougar frowns. Yeah, Jake may have had these guys on his fuck-with list for a long time, but that’s different than Cougar getting to personally take it out of their hides.
“Look,” says the tech, “You’re a scary dude and all and I seriously don’t want to fuck with you, but this is J-Mageddon, and his reach and his memory are both pretty fucking long and he can mess up my entire life in ways you can’t even imagine.”
The tech is freaked out. As many missions as he’s been on, despite being shot at by enemy combatants, yelled at by drill sergeants and special forces COs, despite being outright threatened by Cougar, the fear of Jake Jensen’s anger is enough to have him shaking in his boots.
Cougar’s lips twitch, and he cannot smile now, with his reputation and his secrets at stake.
But inside? There’s a perverse part of him that glows with pride, that even years after he’s left the military, his Jake has the power to make professional hackers quake in fear of his anger.
“Leave it,” Cougar tells the tech. “I’ll find another way.”
A week later the team is sent to crack a gun-runner’s base and get a list of vendors, and if Cougar keeps an eye on their twitchy tech, it’s nothing he wouldn’t do to protect any asset. Really.
================================
Author: LadyJanelly
Fandom: The Losers
Rating: Mature
Characters/Pairing: Jake Jensen/Carlos “Cougar” Alvarez
Warnings: Bullying, hazing, homophobia, racism, internalized homophobia, violence, language, mentions of previous assault and sexual assault,
Notes: Thanks to Peaceful_sands for her hand-holding, cheer-leading and beta-reading
Title from the Led Zeppelin song “Over the Hills and Far Away”
Summary: AU—Jake Jensen left the Army before he ever had a chance to be a Loser. Cougar meets him anyway.
Sometimes what a man needs to be happy is losing the battle he’s been fighting his whole life.
==============
On Saturday they get up before it gets hot and go for a run. Cougar wonders how the others are doing, Clay and Roque on base, Pooch at his Abuela’s house. Wonders if they’re pushing themselves as hard as Jake is nudging him. He remembers the last time he went to his mother’s home to recuperate, years ago. Being waited on hand and foot, scolded if he tried to do anything but watch television and drink beer. Jake understands that Cougar is returning to the field, that he might be on a mission in as little as two weeks and he doesn’t want Cougar pampered, he wants him strong.
So they run, Jake in his t-shirt, shorts and sneakers, Cougar wearing sweat pants and combat boots. They cut out across the park, ankles soon wet with dew. Sometimes cross-country, sometimes on the paved walkways. Jake sets the pace, keeping Cougar challenged but not exhausted. It becomes a matter of pride, to keep up, to not call a halt. He’s glad to see the spreading patch of sweat between Jake’s shoulder-blades, to know that he’s in good enough shape that Jake is getting a workout at least.
They’re back at the house before he expects it, the air-conditioning sharp and cold. Jake tosses him a towel and orders “Go shower, you stinky, stinky man!” Cougar flips him off but he goes to clean up anyway. He starts with the shower set cooler than his body temperature, feels the water rinsing heat from his scalp. It feels good. He feels good. Thinks about Jake’s shoulders in front of him as they ran, Jake’s strong thighs and perfect rear.
It takes a light touch to bring himself to full hardness, one hand on the shower tile, water streaming down over him. He wraps the other around his cock, firm and steady strokes rolling his foreskin over the head of it and back again with every pull. His lips part as he comes, breath without voice lost in the patter of the shower. He stands there, enjoying the aftershocks, letting himself savor the sensations.
Finally he sighs and straightens and steps out of the shower, but leaves the water still running as he combs his hair and shaves the wayward strands of beard that pop up between sideburns and goatee. When he’s done he shuts off the shower and leaves the room.
He passes Jake in the doorway and smirks at him. He hears Jake yelp out “You fucker!” as the cold water hits him and Cougar’s smirk turns to a full on grin. He wonders if Jake will be half as bossy next time.
When Jake’s done with his shower they head to Teresa’s to pick the girls up for lunch. It feels funny to ride in her beige sedan after so many trips in Jake’s truck, but it’s the only vehicle that’ll hold all four of them. Sophie picks sushi and Jake drives them north to a blue-tile roofed Japanese place with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Cougar stays mostly on the fried-food side of it. Eating raw fish isn’t something he wants to do when he doesn’t have to. He teases Sophie by making faces as she tries the tuna and the roe and is glad when she laughs at him and makes exaggerated faces of enjoyment.
It’s good and simple and it’s easy to fall into the fantasy that this is his life, living with Jake, working hard through the week and relaxing on the weekend with those Jake considers family. He can see the danger in it but doesn’t allow himself to pull away.
They get home mid-afternoon and work on the house a while longer. Jake takes first shower this time, comes out with his beard neatly trimmed and gel spiking his blond hair. He digs through the plastic case he keeps his clothes in and pulls out a pale pink button-down shirt and a clean pair of jeans.
“Going out?” Cougar asks and Jake shoos him into the shower.
“Hell yeah. You promised me dancing. You drink, I’ll drive, it’ll be great.”
Cougar rolls his eyes because Jake is the biggest child he has ever met, but he gets ready anyway and together they go back to the gay district.
They park the truck and Cougar settles his hat more firmly on his head. Jake leads the way down crowded sidewalks to a club—not the one they first met at but close enough that it makes no difference. He pays their way and then they’re pushing into the wall of sound and gyrating bodies, the heavy bass thudding into Cougar’s chest.
“What do you drink?” Jake yells into his ear. “Tequila?”
Cougar shrugs and realizes he doesn’t really want one. Doesn’t want to be fucked, not by a stranger, not here. Not where Jake would see and know what he was doing, who he was doing it with.
“I was supposed to buy,” Cougar protests, because if Jake is going to use his promise to get him here, he’ll damn well let Cougar get the tab.
Jake snorts and waves him off, grinning and bouncing on his toes, just as eager as he had been getting into the MMA ring as he weaves through the crowd to the bar. Cougar finds a place by the wall and wonders just how badly the evening will end. Jake finds him a few minutes later, balancing a shot of tequila, a beer chaser and a glass of soda in his big hands.
Cougar downs the shot, grateful for the distracting burn of it, the cool bitterness of the beer after.
Jake leans against the wall beside him, drinks a few sips of his Coke. “So what’s your type?”
Cougar smirks and waves him away. “You came to dance, go dance.”
He half-expects Jake to drag him out to the floor, debates with himself just how much resistance to put up, what moves to use, because of all the things Cougar does well, dancing is not one of them. Jake looks him over, considering, and then hands him his half-full glass and slips out onto the floor.
If anything, Jake is a worse dancer than Cougar. His enthusiasm is boundless and his sense of rhythm a quarter-beat off. He grins and bounces and dances with some pretty Asian boy, turns and shimmies with a blond who is taller than he is. Jake’s partners put up with his lack of skill because he is beautiful, tall and lean, the club lights shining on his skin as he works up a fine sheen of sweat.
A man comes to stand beside Cougar, dark hair, dark clothes, stark black goatee. He smirks sideways and pointedly glances from the glass Cougar is holding out to where Jake is making a fool of himself on the dance floor.
“He yours?” the man asks.
“Mi amigo,” Cougar replies and he’s not sure for a second if the guy will go chat up Jake or if he himself is the target.
“Are you mine?”
The man oozes sleazy sexiness, polished seduction, a practiced script. Cougar can be sure the man will use him and not ask him to stay when they’re done, if they even get to a bed in the first place.
Before Jake, he would have agreed for a night. Would have let himself be fucked, hurt, tossed away. Before Jake he would have wanted every aching minute of it, savored the pain as a way to distract from his own disgust at himself.
“No.” His tone is cold, final. The man looks him over again, intrigued.
“Too bad,” he says, “You and your friend have a nice night.”
Cougar nods and looks back to the dance floor, scanning for Jake’s height, his blond hair and pink shirt. When he catches sight of him again Jake is coming his way, a pair of shot glasses in his hands. He grins and looks half-relieved about something as he trades Cougar the soda for the pair of shots.
“Que?” Cougar asks when Jake doesn’t start talking right away.
Jake shrugs and gulps down the soda, crunches up some ice and swallows before he answers. “I was a little worried you’d leave with El Diablo.”
Cougar questions the statement with a raise of his eyebrow.
“Anybody who works that hard to look evil is not going to be caring and sharing in bed.”
Cougar watches the dancers for a while. Thinks about telling Jake he wouldn’t know caring if it fell into his lap. Imagines Jake’s face if he said he’s always looked for the opposite of caring before. He drops the still-full shot glasses onto the tray of a passing drinks-boy and shrugs. “I didn’t leave my hat in the truck.” When Jake looks puzzled he elaborates, “Guys like that always have to fuck with the hat.”
Jake’s lips quirk into a crooked grin. “You wanna get out of here?”
He does. More than anything. Wants to go back to Jake’s work-in-progress of a home and let Jake lay him out on the sagging mattress and touch him and not hurt him. He wants to know what it’s like, just once.
He nods and they leave, half-deaf as they step out into the humid Dallas night. Jake turns down the sidewalk instead of going straight back to the truck though, leads him to a lime-colored restaurant that serves burritos the size of his arm. There are gay men there, behind the bar and filling the booths, but it feels more like an overflow from the clubs than lunch at Hunky’s had.
They eat and Cougar shakes the buzz from the single shot he’d drunk.
“So it was a little early for this, huh?”
He looks up at Jake.
Jake shrugs. “You’ve still got a week. Seems a criminal shame to waste the chance, on leave, in a city with no military base closer than two hours drive.”
Cougar pushes his food away. “Later,” he agrees, but knows he’s stalling and intends to keep stalling until he’s back at Bragg. That he won’t get fucked this week, won’t let someone use him, not when Jake will be there after, will see on Cougar’s face that it was bad and he’d wanted it to be bad.
They finish their late-night meal and then Cougar’s in no rush to go back to the house where Jake won’t lay him down, won’t fuck him tonight. They walk, up the brightly lit, raucous blocks of Oak Lawn and then east one and back down through a neighborhood of small but posh apartment complexes and little houses.
==============
The days slip past, one by one. On Sunday, Jake takes his sister and niece to church. He leaves the truck in case Cougar needs it. He thinks about it for a while, keys in hand, and then he pulls on his best shirt and cleanest jeans and drives off.
He’s not sure where he’s going. There’s no side of town that’s more immigrant than the other, just little pockets of Hispanic stores and restaurants clumped together here and there. He finds what he’s looking for between a thrift store and auto parts place, a little storefront-church with a full parking lot. He’s been to one like this before, when the pomp and weight of a Catholic service was too much to bear, when he wanted to be a stranger among strangers, people trying to find a home.
The chairs are plastic and all full and Cougar stands at the back with some other men, hat in hand and head bowed as the preacher speaks in rapid Spanish, words of love and compassion and peace. There is no shame in the sermon, no castigation of sin.
Cougar drops a twenty into the collection plate as it’s passed by him and sneaks out as everyone else is lining up for communion.
He’s back at Jake’s house before Jake comes to pick him up for after-church lunch at Teresa’s.
==========
Monday they go to the invite-only night at the MMA gym and Cougar watches as Jake gets taken down again and again. Another man may have become frustrated at the losses and walked away, but Jake just looks thoughtful, calculates what he’s done wrong and how to not do it again. He gives every opponent a good fight though, and his last match of the night he gets the choke hold on for the win.
“You guys want to come out for beers after?” Eliot asks them. Cougar would say yes but Jake’s quick to turn him down.
“Can’t. Work tomorrow,” and Cougar knows that Jake never has Tuesday shifts.
=======
On Wednesday night they paint the whole house, sprayers in hand, masked against the fumes, huge fans blowing the overspray out of the open doors. It’s hot and ugly work, even if the sun is already down.
“Should be ready to put on the market in two months, maybe less,” Jake announces when they’re through with the huge project. “I need to start looking for another house.”
=========
He’s supposed to have another weekend, doesn’t need to get his ass back to Bragg before Monday night. Still, he’s not surprised when his phone rings while they’re at the park with Sophie on Friday.
“Si,” he answers, as Jake looks curious for just a second before he walks away with his niece to give Cougar some privacy.
“Where are you at?” Clay asks, all brusque efficiency.
“Dallas.”
“They’re pulling us back to duty,” Clay says, “Backup for another team. Flying out tomorrow night if we’re all fit.”
And they’re on god-damn medical leave and Cougar knows he isn’t back to full strength yet, but Clay wouldn’t have let them be recalled without a fight, and no point in bitching about it when it’s already a done deal.
“You fit, Cougar?”
“Si.”
“Give me your address and I’ll have a car from Hood come get you. They’ll call when they’re on the way.”
Cougar tells him Jake’s address, and Clay hangs up. He watches Jake and Sophie kicking a soccer ball around on the field for a while, until Jake’s worried gaze catches his.
“Everything okay?” Jake says as he jogs over.
“Si. Colonel called. Leaving tonight.”
Jake’s lips press together but he doesn’t argue like Cougar expected him to.
“Let’s grab you some food before we take Sophie home. One last meal of real food before you’re back to base. Anything else you need to do besides pack your stuff?”
“No.” Somehow Jake’s efficient processing of the situation is making him feel more guilty, rather than less.
“Sophie!” Jake calls, “Let’s wrap it up! Pizza night!”
They eat and Cougar savors every moment, the good food but more than that Jake’s smiles and Sophie’s pouting that Cougar is leaving earlier than expected.
Cougar’s phone rings as they’re leaving the restaurant, a corporal from Hood letting him know he’s about two hours out.
Jake drops Sophie off at her mother’s and drives Cougar back to the house. “I’ll take pictures of the house for you,” he promises as they go inside. “Of what it looks like when it’s finished, in case you don’t get back before I sell it.” Like Cougar returning to Dallas is a foregone conclusion.
Cougar doesn’t have much to pack. Some shirts he’d pulled out to decide between once, and a bag of dirty laundry that he thought he’d have time to wash before he left that goes into a garbage bag before being stuffed into his duffel.
They sit on the edge of the bed and wait, not much time for anything else. Jake takes the phone from Cougar’s hand and puts his number into it.
“Call me this time, asshole.”
Cougar makes no promises to Jake, but he silently vows that it won’t be months without some communication this time.
There’s a beep of a car’s horn out front and Jake walks him to the door. This is why it is a bad idea for a soldier to form attachments outside of his unit, the pain of saying goodbye, knowing he could leave and never return.
“Hey,” Jake says, sad but smiling. “Sorry you didn’t get laid, I thought I had another weekend to work with.”
And fuck it. Fuck waiting and wanting and denying himself. Fuck pretending that he doesn’t want the one thing he does.
Cougar’s bag hits the floor and he steps forward, crowding Jake back against the wall, catching him with one hand at the nape of his neck and the other at his hip. Jake’s blue eyes go wide, startled. Cougar’s heart pounds in his chest. He’s done this with women, but he has never kissed a man, never had to look up to brush his lips to another’s.
He pauses, half a second to let Jake accept or protest, and then he’s kissing him, slow and sure and deep, using every bit of skill he’s cultivated with women even as his mind is cataloging the strangeness of it, Jake’s beard against his chin, Jake’s strong hands coming up to grab his shoulders and hold him close. Jake so damn tall and broad. Cougar moans and his skill deserts him and he’s devouring Jake’s mouth, hungry and desperate to tell him “I only wanted you, idiot,” and only the kiss to express himself with.
There’s a second beep from outside and in a second his driver will leave the car and come to the door and if he sees them both, red-lipped and flushed with passion, Cougar may as well write a memo before the rumors fly, he’ll be outed just as well either way.
“Dios,” he breathes and pulls away. Picks up the hat he hadn’t even realized he’d dropped and puts it back on his head. Jake lets him go, stunned and leaning against the wall, eyes wide and lips parted. Cougar grabs his bag and hurries out the door.
He hears Jake shout his name, once, but he doesn’t chase after him, doesn’t make a scene. Cougar slides into the waiting car and doesn’t look back.
=============
“You do know the point of time off was for you to eat, right?” Clay looks less than pleased.
Cougar drops his bag and holds his hands out, shoulder height, palms down, and holds them there. His hands are rock-solid, no tremble, no shake. He knows he’s still underweight, too thin. Wiry. If they get into trouble on this mission he’ll have fewer eserves to draw on.
Clay looks at his face instead of his hands, like he can peel away a mask and find the truth he’s looking for.
“Put your hands down,” Clay finally grouses at him. “What have you been doing?”
Cougar picks up his bag and Clay walks with him to the barracks room they’re using for the one night’s sleep before they fly out again.
“Eating,” Cougar says with a smirk. “Fixing a house, road work, hand-to-hand sparring.”
Clay makes a noise that sounds a little like approval. “Better skinny and fit than chubby and soft, I guess.”
They join the other team the next night, and somehow get lucky enough to spend three weeks running backup in the jungle without meeting up with a single enemy.
===============
Cougar checks his official e-mail when they get back to the States, and there among the spam and professional messages is a single personal mail, and in that mail a single line of text:
“COUGAR! WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK WAS THAT? This isn’t over.”
He smirks and deletes it. He’ll call Jake soon.
================
“Roque and I rented a house, four bedrooms. Pooch is taking one and the last is empty,” Clay says as he watches Cougar field-stripping the rifles he’ll use for the next op. Cougar doesn’t answer, not sure what the hell this has to do with him.
“It’s not healthy for a man to sleep and eat and work all in the same place for too long,” he adds, and Cougar swabs the inner workings, tilting the metal bits to catch the light.
“You’re moving in with us, and that’s an order!” Clay finally snaps and Cougar looks up at him. Oh. “Your split is four-hundred a month and if we get another full-time member you and Pooch fight it out to see who he bunks with.”
That thought makes him smirk, but he nods to Clay and goes back to work, wondering how this will change things, being closer still to these men.
He writes his madre a letter and sends it with that month’s check, telling her he’ll have less to send now, and that he’s living off-base. On impulse, he puts the home phone number at the bottom. As much as he hates dodging her calls, he cannot stomach the idea of leaving her no way to try.
Of course she calls, gets Pooch all riled up, “Dude, she’s your momma, take the damn phone!” until he starts making himself scarce whenever it rings. Sometimes he’ll listen from the other side of the wall as they talk, can imagine his madre and her broken English, asking Pooch if Carlos is eating, if he’s found a girl-friend, if he’s happy.
================
“I thought your family was in southern California,” Roque says as they’re riding a Humvee over a broken desert wasteland. He has to yell over the bump and rattle of the pitted road, but nobody else could hear.
Cougar shrugs, knows the others see his mail as it comes in, his mother’s neat print on the envelopes, a letter every week.
“What the hell is in Dallas then?”
“Mi Amigo,” Cougar says, “Jake.” Even bringing his name here seems like a risk or a betrayal.
He doesn’t provide any more information and Roque doesn’t ask again.
================
Cougar has a fuck-with list; the only problem is it has no names on it. He can’t ask Clay, can’t ask anyone he knows, because there will be questions, questions whose answers could get him thrown out or worse. A week of down-time (on hold, confined to base, waiting to see which of three ongoing missions will need them to run clean-up operations), drives him restless. He finds himself looking into the eyes of the soldiers he passes, wondering if they were there, the night Jake was hurt.
He needs to know the names, the faces. He needs a tech, someone soft enough for him to push without pushing back, someone intimidated enough to keep their mouth shut and not ask questions. Someone he outranks.
Current techs are easier to stalk than past connections between soldiers and Cougar chooses fresh blood for his prey, a scrawny twenty-something kid with a twitchy personality. He’s not special forces, but better with computers than anyone currently serving who has survived Q. His security clearances are high and he gets loaned out to different teams when his skills are needed.
Cougar needs his skills. He waits until the kid is in the dining hall, comes over and sits across from him, stares silently until the kid freezes, staring up like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
“Walk with me, Private,” Cougar says and the kid gets up, leaves his lunch and follows Cougar out the door.
“I need a list of names,” Cougar tells him when they’re out of earshot of everyone, taking the long walk out towards the sniper range. “Around two years ago, there was a soldier, probably stationed at Fort Hood. Special forces.” And he hopes that’s right, that Jake isn’t one of a thousand posers in the world, claiming to be things they’re not.
“His name is Jake Jensen. I need to know the names of the men he last served with. You will get me these names and then forget we spoke. Understand?”
The kid nods like there’s a spring loose in his neck. “Yeah, I can do…wait, Jake Jensen? Jacob Alan Jensen? J-Mageddon?”
Cougar pins him with a look, knowing he’ll keep talking if Cougar doesn’t.
“He was one of us, dude, and then he was one of you guys and…” the tech’s eyes go wide and then narrow suddenly. “That was years ago,” he says and Cougar doesn’t like where this was going. “Why would you care?” he blinks. “How would you know? Oh, shit, you know him? Jensen?”
Cougar can almost see the gears turning in the kid’s head. “Oh-em-gee, are you dating J-Mageddon? Seriously?”
Cougar looks around but nobody seems to have heard, nobody close enough to hear, even though the kid’s voice keeps getting higher. Panic clenches in his chest and he steps into the kid’s personal space. He growls, “Say that again and I’ll kill you.”
“No,” the kid breathes, eyes wide. “Hey, no, sorry. But. It was a shitty thing that happened. He was one of us. Geek solidarity. I’ll get you those names.”
He looks to see if Cougar is going to murder him on the spot, and when he doesn’t, the kid gives him a quick salute and then turns and jogs away.
Cougar continues on to the sniper range, the long distances of it making it the furthest from barracks except for artillery. He settles himself in one of the blinds, comfortable even without his rifle. He takes his phone out, scrolls through his few contacts, thumb resting on the keys.
Before two on a Tuesday . Jake should be at home, maybe eating lunch. Cougar presses talk and listens to the soft trilling as the phone connects. Jake’s bright “Hello?” and it all seems a million miles away.
“Hola,” he says, and hears Jake laugh.
“Cougs?”
“Si.”
“Good to hear from you, man. I wasn’t sure. The way we left things, you know?”
Cougar closes his eyes, listens to Jake breathe on the other end.
“You still there?”
“Si.”
“Not much of a phone guy?”
“No.”
“Then I’m flattered as hell that you’d call,” Jake says and Cougar smiles at the thought of it.
“Cougs,” Jake says, soft and low. “What the hell was that? I just…I thought you weren’t into me like that.”
Cougar sighs. “Jake.” And he doesn’t know what else to say. “Face to face, si?”
“Yeah,” Jake answers, “I can wait.”
Then Jake starts talking, about the progress on the house and Sophie’s new soccer team, his latest nights sparring at Eliot’s gym and the guys there. Cougar is glad to hear it, to feel he’s given Jake even this little bit of his self back.
He listens to Jake until his phone is warm against his ear and beeping plaintively that its battery is at the end of its life.
“Call me again sometime, okay?” Jake asks, and Cougar nods even though Jake is far from him.
“Si. I will.”
They hang up without words of endearment and Cougar wonders if this is even possible, even if they both want it—to build a life together in the brief days and weeks of any year that Cougar hasn’t already obligated himself to his team.
He thinks of Jake’s smile and Jake’s shoulder bumping his and he knows if it can be done, that he wants to try.
===============
Cougar thinks he’s going to have to track down his semi-willing accomplice in the quest for naming Jake’s attackers. He doesn’t expect him to run across half the courtyard to intercept Cougar in the middle of the afternoon, all puffed up like a Bantam rooster.
“What the fuck, man?” he hisses at Cougar and Cougar hustles him out of sight before they catch the attention of the base’s rumor-mill.
“What?” Cougar asks.
The tech’s hands flutter around in impotent anger. “You didn’t tell me he didn’t want you to know!” he protests. “Did that not seem important?”
Cougar glares and the kid swallows, gets himself under a modicum of control.
“He locked me out of my own system,” the tech complains. “For half the night I’ve been arguing with a purple CGI rabbit to please go away without reformatting my hard drive.” He gulps. “He said to tell the big kitty that it’s been taken care of a long time ago and not worth new trouble.”
Cougar frowns. Yeah, Jake may have had these guys on his fuck-with list for a long time, but that’s different than Cougar getting to personally take it out of their hides.
“Look,” says the tech, “You’re a scary dude and all and I seriously don’t want to fuck with you, but this is J-Mageddon, and his reach and his memory are both pretty fucking long and he can mess up my entire life in ways you can’t even imagine.”
The tech is freaked out. As many missions as he’s been on, despite being shot at by enemy combatants, yelled at by drill sergeants and special forces COs, despite being outright threatened by Cougar, the fear of Jake Jensen’s anger is enough to have him shaking in his boots.
Cougar’s lips twitch, and he cannot smile now, with his reputation and his secrets at stake.
But inside? There’s a perverse part of him that glows with pride, that even years after he’s left the military, his Jake has the power to make professional hackers quake in fear of his anger.
“Leave it,” Cougar tells the tech. “I’ll find another way.”
A week later the team is sent to crack a gun-runner’s base and get a list of vendors, and if Cougar keeps an eye on their twitchy tech, it’s nothing he wouldn’t do to protect any asset. Really.
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Date: 2012-06-24 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-24 03:02 pm (UTC)